Le Rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel), is an orchestral tone poem, op. 31 (1871), based on an old legend. Hercules is the slave of the Lydian queen. He disguises himself as a woman and is put to the task of spinning. The whirr of the spinning wheel is simulated by the violins at the beginning of the composition. The abused Hercules is then represented by a somber subject for the bass. Soon the whirr returns in an increased tempo to point up Hercules’ return to the business of spinning.
The composer’s most famous opera, Samson and Delilah, is represented on semi-classical programs with its colorful, exciting Bacchanale. The opera was first performed in Weimar in 1877, its libretto (by Ferdinand Lemaire) based on the famous Biblical story. The Bacchanale comes towards the end of the opera, the second scene of the third act. At the Temple of Dagon, the Philistines are celebrating their victory over Samson and the Hebrews with wild revelry in front of a statue of their god. A part of these festivities consists of a bacchanale to wild music Semitic in melodic content, orgiastic in tone colors, and barbaric in rhythms. The most celebrated vocal selection from this opera is Delilah’s seductive song to Samson, “My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice” (“Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix”).
The Suite algérienne, for orchestra, op. 60, is a set of four “picturesque impressions of a voyage to Algeria,” in the composer’s own description. The opening movement is a prelude. The sea is here depicted in a swelling figure while brief snatches of melody suggest some of the sights of Algiers as seen from aboard ship. “Moorish Rhapsody” (“Rapsodie mauresque”) is made up of three sections. The first and last are brilliant in sonority and tonal colors, while the middle one is an Oriental song. “An Evening Dream at Blidah” (“Rêverie du soir”) is a dreamy nocturne picturing a famous Algerian fortress. The most popular movement of the suite is the last one, a rousing “French Military March” (“Marche militaire française”)—vigorous, at times even majestic, music representing the composer’s delight and sense of security in coming upon a French garrison.
Pablo de Sarasate
Pablo de Sarasate was born in Pamplona, Spain, on March 10, 1844. As a child prodigy violinist he made his debut in Spain when he was six, and soon thereafter toured the country. In 1859 he completed with honors a three-year period of violin study at the Paris Conservatory. He was only fifteen when he initiated a worldwide career as virtuoso which continued until the end of his life and placed him with the foremost violinists of his generation. In his concerts he featured prominently his own arrangements and fantasias of opera arias as well as his original compositions in all of which he could exhibit his phenomenal technique. Some of his compositions are now staples in the violin repertory. They include the Gypsy Airs (Zigeuenerweisen), Caprice Basque, Jota aragonesa, Zapatadeo, and the Spanish Dances.
The Gypsy Airs is a fantasia made up of haunting gypsy tunes and dance rhythms. The heart of the composition comes midway with a sad gypsy song which finds contrast in the electrifying dance melodies and rhythms that follow immediately.
Sarasate produced four sets of Spanish Dances, opp. 21, 22, 23, and 26, all for violin and piano. The identifiable Spanish melodies and rhythms of folk dances are here exploited most effectively. The most famous of these is the Malagueña, a broad and sensual gypsy melody followed by a rhythmic section in which the clicking of castanets is simulated.
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was born in Vienna, Austria, on January 31, 1797. He was extraordinarily precocious in music and was early trained to play the violin, viola and organ. From 1808 to 1813 he attended the Imperial Chapel School where he received a thorough musical background while preparing to be a chorister in the Chapel Choir. He showed such remarkable and natural gifts for music that one of his teachers, the renowned Antonio Salieri, did not hesitate to call him a “genius.” When the breaking of his voice compelled him to leave the school in 1813, Schubert was encouraged by his father, a schoolmaster, to enter the field of education. For two years, from 1814 on, Schubert taught in the school owned and directed by his father. During this period he demonstrated phenomenal fertility as a composer by producing operas, symphonies, masses, sonatas, string quartets, piano pieces, and almost 150 songs including his first masterpiece, The Erlking (Der Erlkoenig). After 1817, Schubert devoted himself completely to composition. He remained singularly productive even though recognition failed to come. Few of his works were either published or performed—and those that were heard proved dismal failures. He managed to survive these difficult years only through the kindness and generosity of his intimate friends who loved him and were in awe of his genius. Combined with the frustration in failing to attract public notice with his music—and the humiliation of living on the bounty of friends—was the further tragedy of sickness brought on by a venereal disease. A concert of his works in Vienna on March 26, 1828 seemed to promise a turn in his fortunes. But it came too late. He died in Vienna on November 19, 1828—still an unrecognized composer. So completely obscure was his reputation that for many years some of his crowning master works lay forgotten and neglected in closets of friends and associates, none of whom seemed to realize that they were in the possession of treasures.
Schubert was undoubtedly one of the greatest creators of song the world has known. His almost five hundred art songs (Lieder) is an inexhaustible source of some of the most beautiful, most expressive, most poetic melodies ever put down on paper. He created beauty as easily as he breathed. The most inspired musical thoughts came to him so spontaneously that he was always reaching for quill and paper to get them down—whether at his home, or at the houses of his friends, in restaurants, café-houses, and even while walking through the country. “The striking characteristics of Schubert’s best songs,” wrote Philip Hale, “are spontaneous, haunting melody, a natural birthright mastery over modulation, a singular good fortune in finding the one inevitable phrase for the prevailing sentiment of the poem, and in finding the fitting descriptive figure for salient detail. His best songs have an atmosphere which cannot be passed unnoticed, which cannot be misunderstood.” But far and beyond his natural gift at lyricism was his genius in translating the slightest nuances and suggestions of a line of poetry into tones. It is for this very reason that he is often described as the father of the Lied, or art song.